Beaujolais Nouveau est arrivé

It's a big deal when the new vintage of this fruity drink-it-while-we-got-it French wine is made available and a tradition that its coming out party is always on the 3rd Thursday of November. There wasn't all that much fanfare around Aix - a few restaurants had specials on, and Toni picked up a bottle at the local wine store.

In fact we might not have even noted the event were it not for the turkey hunt we were on - no gun, just looking for a boucherie that had the apparently rare dinde in stock. Turkey is not a big seller in France, and US Thanksgiving is certainly not celebrated here (but wait, an extra 2 and half days off of work, hmmm, the unions might go for that), so we had to special order a bird. Who know what we'll end up with.

Anyway, the French media claims than almost 40 million bottles of Beaujolais Nouveau will be drunk in the next three weeks. "Corks popped around the world just after midnight as the fruity new-harvested wine was sampled by millions: with six million bottles going to Japan alone amongst 110 countries."

Bertrand Chatelet, head of Sicarex research institute for the study of Beaujolais wines, describes the 2010 wine as “very aromatic with strong hints of wild strawberries, raspberries and redcurrants."

We're stalking up for Thanksgiving because we've been told it goes well with turkey.